Football For Public And Player | by Herbert Reed

Twenty years of football, as player - in an humble-capacity, albeit begun under the best of coaching - spectator on the side line or in the stand, and as a sporting writer, have taught me that of all those who are bound up in the most fascinating of school and college games, the spectators form the class that has suffered the most serious neglect. Football coaches are usually secretive persons, and they have succeeded in bewildering the man in the stand even when failing to outwit the man on the field. It is the spectator who needs the coaching nowadays, and it is in the hope of clearing away for his benefit and that of the uncoached schoolboy much of the mystery that has been deftly thrown around the game by those in close touch with the great football universities that this book is offered to a sometimes puzzled football public...

Twenty years of football, as player - in an humble-capacity, albeit begun under the best of coaching - spectator on the side line or in the stand, and as a sporting writer, have taught me that of all ...

It requires no experience in prophecy to predict that the future history of the football with which our schoolboy, collegian, and grandstand enthusiast are familiar is to be as American as its past. T...

We have played the English game with such patience as was at our command, and found it wanting. We went through, years ago, the game that English fifteens play every year, with occasional simple varia...

In a game under American rules between two well-matched teams, the players of each eleven are often on the attack, often on the defense, knowing in advance which role they are to assume. This makes fo...

In public life the percentage of successful men who are graduates of the gridiron is high. In the fall of 1912 Bum McClung - to give him his undergraduate title-Treasurer of the United States under ...

The art of football constantly aspires to the condition of warfare. Let me hasten to assure both the followers of the game and those opposed to it that this statement is made in an academic spirit. I ...

The theory and practice of war and football are divided into strategy and tactics, the division in the gridiron game being not as sharp as in battle, since on the gridiron one is at all times in conta...

Von Moltke's definition is really broad enough to cover tactics as well, and is therefore not quite as exact, for our purpose, as du Teil's, for the latter in its very terms presupposes a period when ...

It is true of football as it is of war that the commander of the defense must disseminate his forces. The attack may always work along the safe interior lines, concentrating the destructive elements...

Both in warfare and football the old-style frontal attack has been abandoned to a large extent. The odds against it in both cases are far too great save when the enemy is unusually weak. Time was when...

Time was - in the dawn of American college football - When the captain of a university or college football team was not obliged to share with others not members of the eleven the glory of victory or t...

There are still those who contend that a team will be no better and no worse than its captain, but the conviction has been steadily growing that the coaching and the work of the quarterback in these d...

School players are of course simply at the dawn of the game; they are more prone to nervousness than their elders of the colleges, and few coaches can hope, under the present rules, for that smart han...

It not infrequently happens that a big university eleven does well under a head coach who has very little assistance anywhere near his own caliber, as Wisconsin under Juneau, Michigan under Yost, and ...

Football, as it is understood especially by captain and coach rather than by the spectator, begins much earlier than the uninitiated might imagine. It is hardly too much to say that so far as the two ...

Granting, then, that conditions at the university in question are favorable, that the scholarship of the left-over candidates and veterans is all that could be desired, and that the system in use is s...

He will decide also, in this little private August seance, whether it will be worth while to move some of his veterans from their old positions to new, either to concentrate or distribute the strength...

If sacrifices are necessary in picking out material for the planned campaign, the head coach is more likely to sacrifice speed in the forward line than in the backfield, for the backs have an enormous...

It will be seen readily enough, I think, that in attack the value of weight and strength is hardly to be overestimated, and that the big men who are not too slow, or who can be speeded up by hard coac...

No coaching system can endure that is not founded upon truth-telling among the men who have the team in their hands. When one man of the staff stands alone in his opinion about certain measures or cer...

On the other hand should the field coach be an old-timer he may he in reality a trifle unprogressive, as was the case in many of the larger institutions at the time the first radical changes were made...

In studying their own eleven the bleacher coaches will pick up many a little point that needs correction, and that is not so readily discovered by the active coaches who are standing on the field on...

Most football squads under modern coaching systems consist of the first or 'varsity eleven, and the scrubs, the latter term embracing all other players. In some of the more progressive institutions ...

Throughout October the big elevens play only the simplest football, in. order that the material may be brought to a high state of efficiency without, through the medium of complicated and advanced for...

I do not recall any man in recent years who has made more of this style of play than Ketcham, the husky Yale captain of 1913. A natural diagnostician, he was helped greatly by the post he assumed in t...

Since the restriction has been removed from the kick there is the threat of at least a short kick in every play, and since the necessary delay to make perfect the forward pass requires only that a mem...

It is perhaps needless to explain that the success of simple plays like these, depending on a back of individual power and speed, and forwards skilled in individual interference, must go with the prec...

When the last man in the diagonal is five yards behind the line of scrimmage the formation contains the threat of any play possible under the rules, and has the still further advantage that the order ...

Football is a game that requires of the player not merely good, but exceptional condition. The man who has done a deal of fairly severe physical work daily, whose muscles are hard, and whose wind appe...

Again, if something is going wrong with the training table it is the trainer who first discovers the trouble and has the matter rectified. All that close watching off the field that the coach is too b...

Nothing but long experience will equip the trainer with a knowledge of protective bandaging, but the old-timer will see to it that his eleven takes the field well fortified at least as far as the impo...

There are of course extreme cases of gridiron sluggishness - men who can be aroused only by harsh measures of an extremely personal kind. Such men are apt to be overendowed with good nature, or to be ...

With the simple theories of attack and defense well understood, and the pristine awkwardness of the new material overcome, the coaches are ready to get in their best work teaching the fine points of i...

When receiving the direct pass from the center the runner will either take the ball before starting, or in mid-career, the latter apt to be dangerous. When using these direct passes the runner must be...

Once free of the last man in the defense the back must guard against the natural tendency to overstride, for this would be fatal to the success of his run. Above all, as he values his reputation, he s...

The ideal backfield contains four punters, drop and placement kickers, and forward passers, but such a backfield is as rare as the white rhinoceros. But if both fullback and quarter can punt, forward ...

With kicking at its scientific height to-day almost any backfield is apt to strike moments of demoralization. Under such conditions it is a good plan to signal for a fair catch a few times in order to...

In meeting the runner on either side the body should be thrown across in front of the legs and the latter pinned against the tackler's chest. If the tackier has made a hard enough drive this will turn...

There are, generally speaking, two systems of line play on defense, one used all over the field, the other usually confined to the space between the two twenty-yard lines. The first is the low-chargin...

With the guard just outside his opponent the tackle may take considerably more room, taking care to be outside the outside man on the attacking line; he should not be coaxed out too far to protect the...

Every forward must remember that on the offense as it is planned nowadays, he is expected to do as much interfering as the backs - this in addition to the regular blocking and opening of holes. For th...

In the course of the development of any first-class eleven there comes a time when the finest possible touches in team play must be put on. This ultimate polish is the result of instruction that has b...

He can be saved from this danger by the shouting of his companions, always provided that they have been taught to do that sort of thing without confusion. He should be able to tell without looking aro...

I should say nothing at all in a work intended for sportsmen only about stealing an opponen's signals were it not-for the fact that I want to emphasizet the utter worthless ness of it. I know of a spe...

Time was when the football field meant to the average eleven merely a battle ground on which to make more consecutive yards than its opponent, never releasing the ball to the adversary until it was ev...

The fullback, indicated by the cross (X) mark, has just managed to get his punt away in safety, and his forwards are seen, at the left of the picture, in full cry down the field. Thus the Minnesota, ...

Against this shift the defensive line has to remember merely to stand fast, save when it results in a lop-sided formation, in which case the defensive line simply slides as against the other shifts. A...

The arrangement of the men will depend of course upon their own personal range, the ability of the kicker, and the wind. In case the kicking team possesses a strong down-field line man who is a hard t...

The passer, indicated by the cross (X), has made the necessary delay and will pass the ball to one of two eligible receivers, indicated by the arrows ( {), who are getting down the field and out to th...

The third element, protection, is not so difficult as the other two, for a back may protect the passer as he does a kicker and then go down the field to cover the pass in case it is intercepted. In th...

The back has made the forward pass successfully so far as he is concerned. He is indicated at the left of the picture by the cross (X). The ball, caught by the camera in the course of its flight, appe...

So often has it been charged that American college football was a dull and profitless game for the spectator that the rule makers have sought constantly in recent years to open up the play so that the...

He thinks that the nearer ho gets to the side line the more he will see of the game. The illustration shows one wall of the Harvard Stadium in the course of a Harvard-Maine game. No one but a keen fol...

Some players wear white ankle bandages on one leg or both, some wear jackets, others jerseys only. There are differences in padding that are easily recognized after a little painstaking observation, a...

Now the point I want to emphasize is this, that as Yale's style of attack and probable method of scoring were well known even to the general public before the game, the average spectator, had he taken...

On the defense the positions of the backs should be carefully noted, shutting out in the course of this observation the attack until it reaches the line. Under modern conditions a team is heavily depe...

At the end of the first half it is a good plan to go in for a mental recapitulation that what happens in the second half may be the expected rather than the unexpected. Has one team done a great deal ...

Loss Or Fifteen Yards Failure of substitute to report to Referee or Umpire; illegal return to game; player leaving field during one-minute intermissions; interference with a fair catch; throwing play...

Refusal to abide by the Referee's opinion as to length of game; refusal to play within two minutes after order by Referee; refusal to allow game to proceed. The scoring of a touchdown, goal from touc...

Yale's resources extend even to the use of the shoestring, the desperate violation of all generalship whatsoever in the effort to win. The Blue has been the greatest rallying team between the halves...

Wendell, Harvard's captain and halfback, is carrying the ball. After a good gain he has all but broken free, and is prepared with his right hand to stiff-arm the tackier in the secondary defense. Th...

Among the very first to realize the value of the loose ball game under the new rules, Princeton opened out the play to the limit, and maintaining the terrific speed that had been typically Princeton...

It is only in recent years that the Western defense has come to approach the range of the Eastern defense, whereas Yost, the Michigan coach, has been far in advance of any Eastern coach in the plannin...

In spite of its insistent demand for the subordination of individual to team effort football has produced more stars than any other college sport that has been dependent on organization on the field. ...

Yale soon afterward scored a touchdown as the result of a blocked kick. So matters stood when the Yale eleven, toward the close of the first half, found itself just over Princeton's forty-yard line. T...

Kelly of Princeton was another genius who knew more football than anyone could teach him, and who upon occasion proved that he could go it alone. One of the most remarkable exhibitions of consecutive ...

It was in this same game of 1893 that J. R. Blake, the Princeton fullback, did a bit of quick thinking and took a dangerous risk that meant a great deal to Princeton's chances. It was at a time when P...